Saturday, August 9, 2008

Kinky.


Tomorrow (Sat) might be another slow day on Coozer Files. The first third of the day is all about the blintzes. Then - FREE KINKY SHOW! Ohmygosh.

Kinky is a great dance/punk/pop/Spanish rock band from Mexico that rocks mi gringo culo estupido. They're playing a free show at Central Park's Summerstage. If you're a New Yorker, there is no reason why you shouldn't be there, unless of course you're my evil doppelganger and we must never meet. (I know you're out there.)

After Kinky, my friend Dan the Canadian Cowboy is coming into town! How awesome is Dan? Let me count the ways: 1) He walks around with a cowboy hat. 2) He earnestly plays slightly dated novelty pop songs like "Milkshake" and "Toxic" ON BANJO! 3) He is traveling 14 hours on a Canadian Greyhound, where the odds of him being dismembered and his corpse defiled are staggeringly high. Especially if he whips out his banjo and plays that Feist iPhone song.

Anyway, if you need a Coozer fix, stop by ReadJunk.com for more news and fun stuff. Join the forum on RJ and make some friends! Or just go to CuteOverload. I know you want to. The Coozer Files and ReadJunk might be great, but there's no way we can compete against teh kittehs.

Gone Blintzin'

I haven't been posting much today - an alarmingly rare occurrence in my four days of blogging.

The reason is culinary, familial, and religious. I have been making blintzes since 2 pm. (It is now after midnight, when I should be turning the lights down low for sweet, sweet looooove. Mmm, redtube....)

I explained a few days ago why my life has become focused on blintzes instead of more important obsessions like social justice, power rock trio Rush, and/or Jeff Goldblum. Long story short, tomorrow is the big day where I unleash my Crepes of Canaan upon the world.

I made six different blintz fillings tonight (as well as a faro salad). I won't get into them all, but the most irritating and probably least good (and yet my proudest achievement in spite, or perhaps because of that) was a chicken chile concoction. Shit is disgusting but I enjoyed making it, even though it'll be too spicy and nasty for my family. Here's what I did:

COOZER'S CHICKEN CHILE BLINTZ FILLING

1) I threw three chicken breasts into a pot and covered them with broth. Also threw in a quartered onion, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, and a handful of cilantro. I set that shit to boil.

2) Meanwhile, I took a jalapeno and one of those cool, long, twisted green peppers and roasted them in the oven on 350. I promptly forgot about them for half an hour.

3) When the pot of chicken started boiling, I covered and simmered for 8 or so minutes, then removed from heat and kept covered for 20 minutes or so.

4) I dusted off my blender and threw in the peppers, which were blackened and cool looking. (You're supposed to take the skin off, and also try to gut out the seeds and membrane so they're not too insanely hot - but I didn't bother because I'm lazy and unskilled at that sort of thing.) I also added to the blender a cup of chicken broth from the pot, and also threw in some fresh cilantro and an entire small container of sour cream. I blended for 10 seconds or so and voila! Frothy, spicy, liquid death.

5) Once the chicken had cooled, I began pulling them into small strips. Holy shit, that was annoying. I never gave much thought to shredded chicken or pulled pork and had assumed there was some amazing machine that did that for you. Is there? Please buy me one.

6) 500 years later, I was done shredding the chicken by hand. I put the chicken into a container, poured in just enough spicy brothy liquid to cover it, and set in the fridge. Tomorrow, I'll shove that shit into a blintz, and garnish with pepper jack. Too bad no one will eat it, because my family's idea of spiciness is oregano.

7) Because I handled hot peppers tonight by hand, I'm too afraid to, ah, bop the bishop. "No glove, no love" indeed.

Friday, August 8, 2008

I'm turning Chinese, I really think so.

Although I've banned the Chinese Olympics in my heart, I still had to see the opening ceremonies. Man, that was some good stuff, if kind of sinister and an ominous foreshadowing of what's to come.

But, you know what? If China takes over and becomes my new master, I'd be happy to learn to play synchronized drums like that. Even if they force me to practice 20 hours a day and wear diapers to prevent bathroom breaks. I will release my bowels upon myself for Mother China.

I love you, China.

Fatal mystery disease being spread by vampires.


Dozens of people in South America have died from a strange disease that has epidemiologists and virologists baffled. It may be some creepy new strain of rabies spread by VAMPIRE BATS!

Something tells me this is how the Great Zombie Uprising will begin.

New Scientist has the details.

NY Press are witches!

I don't normally check my horoscope, but this is scarily dead-on.
Taurus (April 20-May 20)
What started out looking like a lot of fun has turned out to be a total drag. You weren’t led to this place by false pretenses, per se, but you may as well have been, because what you saw is not what you got. In other words, the glimpse you got beforehand understandably caused you to make assumptions that were far from accurate. Sometimes that can lead to pleasant surprises, but in this case, it didn’t. That mostly lets you off the hook. I wouldn’t just walk away from this without a word, but I would walk away. Offer an honest, non-bitchy explanation about what you’re up to, then take your leave.
I think it's time to become a full-time stay-at-home dad for my cat.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Hurrah for time on my hands!

Happy 50th Post, Coozer Files!

Be! Congestive! B-E Congestive!

26 cheerleaders pack themselves into small elevator, which then breaks down, trapping them in.

No word yet if they stayed in huddle formation.

I'm with stupid.

Man wearing "World's Greatest Dad" shirt arrested for meeting 14-year-old child for sex.

The Boston Globe news item actually has his mug shot with the t-shirt. What a class act.

MD cops raid mayor's house and kill his dogs.

And it was all a mistake.

Poor dogs.

Trailer: Watchmen

I hope this doesn't suck.

Trailer here.

Follow-Up: Karaoke victim was really Lil' Kim victim.

At least one karaoke murder is solved - it wasn't the fault of karaoke at all, but simply proximity to Lil' Kim, which can be lethal. From Yahoo! News:
A New York City nightclub worker has confessed to beating a woman to death during a Sunday night birthday celebration for rapper Lil' Kim, the police commissioner said.

Rahman Syed, 24, was arrested at his home on Thursday after the body of Ingrid Rivera, also 24, was found stuffed in a rooftop utility room on Wednesday afternoon.

No charges have been laid but Syed, a bartender's assistant at the Spotlight Live club in Times Square, admitted killing Rivera, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Rivera was last seen at Spotlight Live, where bouncers kicked her out because she was drunk. Police said that was when Rivera met Syed, who offered to take her to find a friend.

Syed hit Rivera with a metal pipe in the building's elevator shed in the early hours of Monday after she refused his advances, police said.

I presume if you karaoke to a Lil' Kim song, you and your entire family will spontaneously combust.

Jurassic Double Park.


Although the Geico cavemen couldn't carry their own tv show, the ads are still wildly popular. Adweek reports that two new cavemen ads will be coming out:
Another spot features former tennis star Billie Jean King at a tournament in which her foe is a caveman. The caveman says: "I can't believe I'm beating Billie Jean King." King replied: "You're not beating me. In fact, you haven't even got a serve in." Both look at the scoreboard, which shows he has yet to score a point. The caveman looks around the arena and realizes Geico is sponsoring the entire event. "I get it," he says with a smile to contain his anger, as he gets up to leave the court. "I quit, but I get it."

"With this new round of cavemen work, we were really trying to stick to the same formula that worked so well in the past: Geico, intentionally or not, dinging cavemen," said Todd Brusnighan, senior copywriter at Martin, Richmond, Va. "We wanted to remind viewers that our cavemen are still out there and their struggles are still very much happening everyday."
I am Adam Coozer and I approve of these messages.

Karaoke kills again.

In Thailand, eight neighbors are gunned down after a John Denver karaoke song gone horribly wrong. On the other side of the world, a crazed attacker invades a home and beats a man close to death with a karaoke machine. And in China, 25 are dead and 30 wounded after a suspicious fire sweeps through a karaoke parlor.

I have been following karaoke-related violence for years. Clearly, there is an underlying thread that binds them all. Still... it is a shadowy enigma. And it deepens with today's discovery of a mysterious woman's body... on top of a karaoke club.

From NY1:
A young woman was found on the roof of a Midtown Manhattan karaoke club Wednesday afternoon.

Police found the 24-year-old woman was found at 4:45 p.m. on top of the Spotlight Live club.

Late Wednesday, authorities were still determining her identity and how she died.

Perhaps North Korea was right.

So is coffee good for you or not?

The NY Times gets to the bottom of coffee's contradictions. They knock out all the myths of both health benefits and detriments of coffee's caffeiney goodness, but they still don't explain why coffee sometimes makes my intestines turn inside-out.

China attacks Japan with pesticide-riddled dumplings.


The Japan Times is so wonderfully random and good-natured. I can't recall them saying one bad thing about China, even during all this crazy stuff going on with the Olympics, but mess with the dumplings and it's WWII all over again.

Food poisoning is no laughing matter (I haven't been the same since a tainted Arch Deluxe in 1996), but it's amusing what the Japan Times reports as news, and how seriously they're following this "cover-up." But in their defense, what the hell is pesticide doing in frozen gyoza?

US teen planned to kill Bush.

This is a weird story. Strangely, I haven't seen this on any US news site, and couldn't find the Washington Post story that this article quotes from. But anyway: Australia's News.com.au reports that a Washington (presumably DC, not the state) teen is under investigation for amassing an arsenal, having a map of Bush's motorcade route through Camp David, having a fake of ID of a federal contractor, and a shopping list for sniper glasses.

According to the article, authorities only picked him up because he was caught trying to steal a car. Crazy.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

What, Me Worry?


It's a long story that I'd rather post with pictures (once developed), but I met Dick DeBartolo (main writer at MAD Magazine for 40+ years), and he gave me the grand tour of the MAD offices. It was amazing. I probably haven't read a MAD since the 80s, but all of the paraphernalia, toys, posters, original art, framed covers, you name it, had the 10-year-old in me dance around with glee. And Dick was totally awesome - telling stories and anecdotes and mischievously showing cool, rare stuff.

He even signed the new issue which won't hit the stands for two weeks. He signed it to "Steve", but that's okay. I'd like to think he was just being what he's been for 40 years - funny.

Coozer-Bits.

Yahoo! News: One negative of outsourcing to India.

Yahoo! News: Mauritania military overthrows freely-elected leader. (Where's Mauritania again?)

NY Post: NJ and Staten Island continue to battle it out for Manhattan's lamest neighbor.

Raw Story: As you may have heard, Bush asked the CIA to forge a letter creating ties between 9/11 and Iraq. White House hasn't denied but they're now trying to squash the whistleblowers. (I should probably discuss all this in more detail, but other blogs have done a better job.) Here's an earlier article that I forgot to post yesterday.

Edmonton Sun: Severed feet keep washing up in Washington state. US blaming chop-happy Canadians.

Bake Or Break: Super easy, tasty Nutella Oatmeal cookies that don't require baking.

Anonva: Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger SEX ATTACK! SEX ATTACK!

Last of the dinosaurs spawns dino kids.


The Daily Mail has an interesting story about Henry the Tuatara, a 111-year-old lizard who is the last direct descendant of the dinosaurs, and is being touted as a potential running mate for John McCain. Ha, I kid.

Anyway, Henry got bizz-ay and is spawning a bunch of dino kids that will someday retake the planet.

Greyhound scraps "no one gets bus rage" ad campaign after on-bus beheading.


Greyhound picked the wrong month to roll out their new ad campaign, which promotes the calm, peace, and relaxation of riding Greyhound. The ad's unfortunate line is: "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'"

Per Yahoo! News, Greyhound will be removing these billboards and posters. If they need a new campaign, The Coozer Files recommends: "Greyhound. You may be stabbed in the face 50 times, decapitated, and eaten. But it still beats the Chinatown dollar van."

NYC's drinking water in danger of contamination.


Interesting article from the NY Sun (thanks Jen!).

Even though NYC tap water has a bad rep, it's actually one of the cleanest in the country. The water comes from clean rivers and reservoirs in the Catskills and is minimally treated, if at all.

Unfortunately, natural gas drilling upstate can ruin this water. If so, NYC will have to build a treatment plant. The plant would cost the city $10 billion, while the gas drilling would give New York STATE only $1 billion per year.

In a sense, the state is willing to poison 10 million NYC residents so they can have economic stimulus for themselves, which likely wouldn't benefit NYC.

I was hoping Albany's disdain for NYC would lessen after asshat Pataki left, but this is practically criminal. They're willing to turn NYC's water TOXIC to fatten their own pockets. Check this out:

The city was not brought into the gas drilling conversation until mid-July, even though state officials had been working on the issue for seven months. The city sent a letter to state officials raising concerns about a new well-spacing bill that was before the governor, and Ms. Lloyd requested special consideration for the watershed a few days later.

Well, just think - maybe soon NYC's water will live up to its reputation.

The Philippines doesn't like MILFs.

The Philippines' Supreme Court shot down a landmark peace accord between the government and the rebel group MILF.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

The Philippine government was due to sign Tuesday a landmark accord with an Islamic rebel group that would create an expanded Muslim homeland on the southern island of Mindanao. But in an unexpected setback, the Philippine Supreme Court on Monday blocked the signing and ordered a court hearing on Aug. 15 into claims that the proposed deal was unconstitutional.

The pact had been expected to pave the way for the two sides to ink a comprehensive peace deal to end a decades-old insurgency that has stunted economic development on resource-rich Mindanao and incubated lethal terrorist networks across Southeast Asia. [...]

"I don't know what will happen next," Mohaqher Iqbal, the chief peace negotiator of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), told Reuters.

Heh heh. MILF.

37 times??!

Clearly I'm living under a rock for not knowing that Kevin Smith is making a sex comedy with Seth Rogan. I'm excited about this - I love Kevin Smith in theory but have only genuinely liked Clerks and Chasing Amy, but I have high hopes for this. Plus Seth Rogan has proven to be the seal of quality.

In any case, it will certainly be crude. It received an NC-17 rating but Smith did what he does best - talk.

From CNN:

Filmmaker Kevin Smith has won an appeal to lower the rating for his comedy "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" from an adults-only NC-17 to an R. [...]

"Zack and Miri," due out October 31 from the Weinstein Co., stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as best friends and roommates who try to make a homemade porn flick to dig themselves out of debt. [...]

Smith said the MPAA ratings board objected to two sex scenes involving co-stars Jason Mewes and Katie Morgan. After the movie's initial NC-17 rating, Smith said he trimmed those scenes as far as he was willing to go but was unable to convince the board to lower the rating. [...]

The appeals board, a separate panel from the ratings board, viewed the movie Tuesday, and Smith presented his arguments. It was the third time Smith successfully talked his way down to a lower rating: His 1994 debut "Clerks" initially received an NC-17 rating that was reduced to an R on appeal, while his 2003 film "Jersey Girl" was reduced to PG-13 after first being rated R.

What do you guys think? Crude but smart like Clerks, or crude but idiotic like Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back? Frankly, the plot reminds me of Trey Parker & Matt Stone's Orgazmo, which isn't particularly a bad thing. Orgazmo is kinda a guilty pleasure of mine.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

In Mother Russia, judge rapes YOU!

From the Huffington Post:

A woman seeking to become only the third woman ever to successfully bring a sexual harassment case in Russia was dealt a shocking rebuke when the judge threw out her case, ruling that sexual harassment is actually necessary for the survival of the human race.

I knew women don't have it great in Russia, but this is a sickening statistic:

According to a recent survey, 100 percent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 percent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven percent claimed to have been raped.

That's messed up.

Web Comic Round-Up

Some recent (not necessarily new) webcomic installments I happen to have bookmarked.

Diesel Sweeties

Beaver and Steve (Get back from hiatus soon, guys.)

XKCD

XKCD on fruit. So true.

Drugs with two letters after the name are a scam.

Interesting point from The Consumerist:

What do those little letters, CD, ER, SR, etc, after a drug's name mean? The exact terminology varies, but they usually translate to the same thing: unnecessary ripoffs.

Whether it says CD, CR, ER, LA, SR, XL, XR, or XT, the letters really stand for a version of the drug that releases differently into the body. By coming up with different variations on old drugs, pharmaceutical companies can keep the profits rolling on drugs whose patents have expired. Best of all, if they can get the doctor to write one of these letter sequences after the drug's name, the pharmacy can't substitute a lower-priced generic (unless a generic of the extended release version is already on the market).

The pharmaceutical companies are so dastardly. Even so, The Coozer Files recommends you discuss your medication needs with your trained health care provider and/or drug dealer.

Game: Amorphous

This game about hack n' slashing slow-moving blobs is simple but deceptively challenging. Plus it reminds me of my annual attempts to clean my bathroom.

A noble experiment.


My friends* at Candy Addict have undertaken a scientific experiment to unilaterally decide if covering an item in chocolate makes it taste better. The obvious answer is HELL YES, but their discovery may shock you.

Blind yourself with science here.

* By friends, I mean I troll their site and silently fume with jealousy at their sugary awesomeness.

Coozer-Bits.

31% of Men Believe “Global Warming is a Myth Invented by the Hippies”. (Link.) In related news, 95% of men enjoy the smell of their own farts.

The Knights Templar sue the Pope. (Link.) They have chosen... wisely.

White House staffers asked to leave Blackberries at home to prevent cyber snooping at Chinese Olympics. (Link.)

'Secret deal' with Iraqi militia kept British troops out of battle for Basra. (Link.)

Kazakhstan has entered the space age. (Their first satellite immediately broke down.)(Link.)

Today's lists and resources.

Full list of US Starbucks store closures. (Link-PDF.)

10 Skills You Need to Succeed at Almost Anything. (Link.)

20 Straight-Edge Pick-Up Lines. (Link.)

How to Survive an Encounter With a Bear. (Link.)

Shock and Awe.

Per the Boston Globe:

More than 80,000 facilities in Iraq will be inspected for faulty wiring as part of an effort to prevent future accidental electrocutions of US troops, the top commander in Iraq said.

At least 10 US soldiers, five Marines and a third-country contractor for the Defense Department have been identified as having died by electrocution in Iraq.

Apparently, a handful of soldiers have been electrocuted to death while taking showers. But here's the interesting part:

Petraeus said a team was named to oversee the review of more than 80,000 facilities, which include 6,000 preexisting Iraqi facilities. All are maintained by the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, which Petraeus said performs operations and maintenance on 61 bases in Iraq as well as smaller combat outposts and security stations. The team will also develop repair and prevention plans, Petraeus said.

Wait, we built 74,000 facilities in Iraq? Damn, that's a lot. Especially if these contractors did a shitty job and couldn't wire them properly. Good thing we're paying them more money to go over their mistakes.

Primates: It's what's for dinner.


48% of primates are facing extinction, including 70% of primate species in Asia.

Interestingly, you can't blame global warming for this one. Mostly, it's tropical forest destruction. Oh, and they're just too darn tasty.

Other threats include hunting of primates for food and the illegal wildlife trade, explained Russell Mittermeier, chairman of global conservation group IUCN's Primate Specialist Group and president of Conservation International.

"In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction," he warned.

"Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact."

Trend Spotting: Heroin


What's the latest craze among suburban youth? Is it milkshakes? Sock hops? Eggplant blintzes?

No, it's heroin!

From ABC News
:

Nationwide, the number of people who said they used heroin in the last month grew from 119,000 in 2003 to 338,000 in 2006, the latest years for which statistics are available, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In 2006, 3.7 million Americans said they had used heroin at some point; about 60,000 were under 18.

Why the spike? It's kind of funny, actually. It's because Oxycontin is now too expensive.

"Unfortunately, 18 to 26 is our big target audience," said Dave Spakowicz, a special agent at the Wisconsin Department of Justice who heads the Milwaukee High Density Drug Trafficking Heroin Initiative. "The price of Oxycontin has doubled in the last year and a half in the Milwaukee area. People are moving to heroin."

Damn you, pharmaceutical companies! Make your barely legal devastatingly addictive drugs cheaper!!

Monday, August 4, 2008

I am the Jewish Anthony Bourdain.

It's true - I am exactly like Anthony Bourdain, only Jewish, not that funny or charismatic, and I don't like eating goose anus, or whatever it is he eats.

But I enjoy cooking, and tonight I made a blizzard of blintzes. A blitz o' blintzes, if you will.

Anyone who knows me is now wondering why. After all, I hate Jewish food, with the exception of my grandfather's mondelbrodt (the Jewish biscotti). I'm the type of Jew who eats pulled pork sandwiches on Yom Kippur and then chases it down with pork juice. (It's easy to make - just squeeze the pig really hard over a glass.)

What was I saying? Oh yes - I made a ton of blintzes tonight. The reason is as follows:

My mom believes her grandmother's blintz recipe is the bee's knees and a potential lost treasure. My mom has occasionally pursued blintz-oriented business plans throughout her life, but she now might be onto something. Recently, she met Judith Jones, the famous cookbook editor who discovered Julia Childs, and, amazingly, my mom got her interested in a blintz cookbook.

Now, rest her soul, but my great-grandmother's blintz recipe is essentially the standard recipe you can find anywhere. (Eggs, milk, water, flour, salt, sugar, and love.) I think my mom knows that, so she's been coming up with surreal and abstract fillings, and has invited the entire family over next weekend to test them out.

The only problem is that my mom is very creative but doesn't quite get ingredients. Last I spoke with her, she has made and frozen: barbecue chicken with bacon; spaghetti with pork meatballs; lemon shrimp and mascarpone; hotdogs with ham and eggs.

Well, I counted four problems with this smorgasbord:

1) These combinations don't ever belong inside a blintz.

2) These combinations don't ever belong outside a blintz.

3) If these combinations were once edible, being frozen for two weeks might not help its case.

4) None of these combinations are remotely kosher, which might be a problem when writing a cookbook on BLINTZES.

I've never made a blintz in my life and have considered them the schlamazel's crepe, but my mom, you know, gave birth to me and kept me fed/clothed for 18 years so I owe her.

I told her I'd make some blintz fillings and bring them over for the tasting.

So tonight was my dry run. I made:

1) Roasted eggplant puree

2) Mashed potatoes with mushrooms and spinach

3) Sweet potato pie

4) Raspberries with goat cheese

5) Chai roasted bananas

6) Strawberries with Nutella

I cooked like a Jew possessed. Possessed with the spirit of Mordecai, son of Jair, tribe of Benjamin! I had four burners going on at once, dishes everywhere, the air thick with oil, powdered sugar and "fried". My smoke alarm even went off, a true sign of either cooking too much or not knowing what the hell I'm doing.

And I'm proud to say that although most of my concoctions sucked ass, I did have a couple of hits and can tweak the rest. The biggest hit, according to Jen (my wife) and Lou and Rhea (my neighbors) was the pureed roasted eggplant. In the spirit of sharing, and to give you a taste of what's to come from my mom's awesome cookbook, here's the recipe for the filling:

1. Grab a stupid-looking eggplant. Slice that shit lengthwise.

2. Preheat the oven at 350, and here's the kicker - preheat a cookie tray at 350 as well. Get that guy nice and hot.

3. While the empty tray cooks, rub your eggplant halves with olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Give it lots of oil - it'll suck it all up, just like yo mama.

4. Put the eggplant halves face down on the cookie tray. Let it cook for 45 minutes.

5. Spend the next 45 minutes listening to Rush's "Permanent Waves." Isn't "Natural Science" awesome?

6. Take out the tray and let it cool. The eggplant is gonna look all weird and shriveled, just like yo mama.

7. When it's cooled down a bit, take a spoon and scrape out the flesh. Put those tasty innards in a blender. And really work it - get all that flesh out of there, scraping the skin and whatnot. If you're hungry at this point, you can chew on the skin. It's really tasty, just like all skin.

8. Once it's in the blender, add a heaping tablespoon or two of sour cream, maybe more pepper, a dash of dill, and blend it only for a few seconds. You want to keep it chunky, just like yo mama.

9. Mix in about 1/4 of a chopped red onion and a handful of shredded basil. Maybe a bit of cilantro if you're an asshole.

10. Put a big tablespoon of the mixture onto the crepe (buy my mom's cookbook for that recipe, cheapass), wrap that shit up, and fry that sucker in clarified butter or canola oil. Repeat with all your crepes.

11. Reward yourself with a glass of sauvignon blanc and some porn.

You are now a Superjew like me. May all your blintzes be fruitful and merry.

Celebrity chef accidentally tells fans to eat deadly, poisonous plant.


From BBC News:

Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologised after he recommended use of a poisonous plant in recipes.

In a magazine interview about watercress and other wild foods, Mr Worrall Thompson said the weed henbane was "great in salads".

Healthy & Organic Living magazine's website has now issued an urgent warning that "henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten".

The chef had meant to recommend fat hen, which is a wild herb.

But how bad could it be?

Its name has Anglo-Saxon origins - meaning killer of hens - and it can cause hallucinations, drowsiness and disorientation in humans.

Larger quantities can cause a loss of consciousness, seizures, trembling of the limbs and, in extreme cases, death.

Oh.

You know, this situation is making me rethink cilantro. Clearly, cilantro usage was either some chef's idea of a sick joke or suggested mistakenly instead of candy buttons.

Coozer-Bits.


International Herald Tribune: US about to get hit by a second, far larger wave of mortgage defaults, which will cripple our economy.

International Herald Tribune: Cultural divisiveness tearing apart... Belgium?

International Herald Tribune: With the dramatic currency imbalance in their favor, foreign tourists treating New York City like a third-world country.

New Scientist: The hottest water on Earth found at the very bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and not on Angelina Jolie's lips.

UK Daily Mail: Stupid teen ruins it for everyone. Thailand pulls Grand Theft Auto after teen kills taxi driver "to see if it was as easy as in the game."

NY Post: A NYC gym is charging customers $110 an hour to play with the Wii.

Terra Daily: Iceland faces hottest day ever on record. You know we're passed the tipping point when it's 80 degrees in Iceland.

Italy Fascism Watch.


Italy seems to be running back down the road to fascism. Very sad for a country that has given us the Renaissance and pepperoni.

With the voting in of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in April, things are looking worse and worse, with the government scapegoating gypsies and immigrants for rising crime, which may or may not be imaginary. Recently, there have been stories of government-sponsored violence against gypsies (including entire camps being burnt to the ground), and the government continues to whip up nationalistic fervor against immigrants.

Now, machine gun-toting soldiers are patrolling major cities because of "public demand." This does not look good. From the BBC News article:

Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa said that after six months the government would "make an evaluation to see whether it has worked and should be extended to other cities".

''This is not a militarisation of cities but a clear response to the perceived demand for greater security," he said last week.

Right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi swept to power in April's election on a tough law-and-order platform, promising new measures to curb illegal immigration and combat crime.

But his government has also been accused of whipping up a xenophobic mood against the illegal immigrants it blames for much of the serious street crime in Italian cities.

Ministers say they are simply responding to Italians' fears. A recent study showed that Italians have never before been so worried about their vulnerability to crime.

Some critical of the Bush Administration have noted that the U.S. has fulfilled the 14 Points of Fascism over the past 8 years, but Italy's growing militarization of its cities is something else entirely and very sinister. We here at Coozer Central (read: me and my cat) will keep an eye on these developments.

One final point: Isn't it interesting that the countries who have had the most people migrating to other countries (Italy, Ireland) have the harshest and tightest immigration laws themselves?

US hospitals - not enforcement agencies - forcibly deporting sick immigrants.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-- Inscription on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.

"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone."
-- The Hippocractic Oath, taken by doctors to swear by ethical medical practice.

"Can't afford medical attention? We'd rather pay for an ambulance to dump your sick ass back over the border."
-- U.S. hospitals.

Our health care system is deeply flawed, yes, but this is downright sinister. Hospitals - not enforcement agencies - are forcibly dumping immigrants back to their homelands. It would be bad enough if hospitals ratted out these immigrants to the authorities, but they're taking it upon themselves to privately deport them so they can save money. This is repulsive.

From the NY Times article exposing this "apparently widespread" practice:
Mr. Jiménez’s benchmark case exposes a little-known but apparently widespread practice. Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance. Medicaid does not cover long-term care for illegal immigrants, or for newly arrived legal immigrants, creating a quandary for hospitals, which are obligated by federal regulation to arrange post-hospital care for patients who need it.

American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.

Indeed, some advocates for immigrants see these repatriations as a kind of international patient dumping, with ambulances taking patients in the wrong direction, away from first-world hospitals to less-adequate care, if any.

Animal activists bomb CA researchers.

From an alarming Chicago Sun-Times article:
Both scientists work at the University of California, Santa Cruz. One of them and his family were forced to escape from a second-story window early Saturday when a firebomb was lit on the home's porch, Santa Cruz police said. An adult was treated at a hospital and released.

Police Capt. Steve Clark called the bombing ''an attempted homicide.''

Also that morning, a firebomb destroyed a car belonging to another researcher. Clark said authorities were treating the attacks as ''domestic terrorism.''

I love animals and feel icky about animal testing, but Jesus Christ. Attempting to kill scientists and their families is extreme, no? Hopefully they catch these asshats before they give animal rights activists a bad (worse) name.

You know energy costs are high when....

...there are state-wide shortages for FIREWOOD. In the dead of summer.

According to this article in the Boston Globe, among other state initiatives, Vermont is encouraging people to cut their wood from public lands.

Things are pretty messed up when oil companies are making record profits and yet still getting tax breaks from the government, while that same government is telling people to cut down their own damn wood.

Science teacher explains the burn of Jesus.

Science and religion go together as well as a branding iron and a child's arm. At least, this nutty middle school science teacher in Ohio thought so. Maybe he was just teaching the class about heat conduction on flesh? You know, through a crucifix.

From the Chicago Tribune:

It's the kind of story that turns heads and stomachs alike, especially in a small town. A well-known and popular middle school science teacher known for strong religious beliefs is charged with branding the shape of a cross onto the forearm of an 8th-grade student.

The teacher is in big and possibly career-ending trouble, a quiet college town is bitterly divided and, rightly or wrongly, the Bible is at the center of it.

The case of John Freshwater, a 21-year veteran of Mt. Vernon City School District, has split this pleasant central Ohio community into squabbling camps—those who see Freshwater as a heroic father figure, persecuted for his Christian beliefs and his insistence on having his personal Bible on his desk, and those who condemn him as a religious predator promoting creationism and intelligent design and undermining the teaching of evolution, in violation of school policy.


The scariest part of the whole story? The fact that the community is rallying behind A 52-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO BRANDED A CHILD'S ARM WITH A CRUCIFIX. This shouldn't be a debate about science vs. religion or religious beliefs vs. school policy. It should be about A 52-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO BRANDED A CHILD'S ARM WITH A CRUCIFIX. Okay, allegedly. But how messed up is it that the community is up in arms (no pun intended) against THE 8TH GRADER??

The actions of the community itself proves why religion makes people idiotic and shouldn't belong in schools, or really anywhere for that matter. Except for Goldblumism.

Parents remember duty-free shopping, forget 3-year-old daughter at airport.


As much as I like the thought of one less screaming child on an airplane, my hatred of stupid parents trumps my hatred of bratty kids in public places.

I know airports can be a chaotic, stressful situation, but maybe keeping an eye on your kids is more important than grabbing a cheap carton of cigarettes. Just saying.

Full article here.

Israeli airport police say a couple going on a European vacation remembered to bring their duty-free shopping and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport.

The couple and their five children were late for a flight to Paris Sunday and made a mad dash to the gate. In the confusion, their daughter got lost. A policeman found her wandering around the terminal, crying for her mother.

Israeli media report Monday that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parents, whose names were not released, didn't notice the child was missing until they were told, in the air, that she had been found at Ben-Gurion airport.

Mars Attacks!


The White House has been quietly briefed about the "potential for life" on Mars, according to Universe Today. As the article points out, we've discovered water on Mars a few times already, but this time there may be very strong evidence of life once having existed there.

From the article:

So why is there all this secrecy? According to scientists in communication with Aviation Week & Space Technology, the next big discovery will need to be mulled over for a while before it is announced to the world. In fact, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory science team for the MECA wet-chemistry instrument that made these undisclosed findings were kept out of the July 31st news conference (confirming water) so additional analysis could be carried out, avoiding any questions that may have revealed their preliminary results. They have also made the decision to discuss the results with the Bush Administration's Presidential Science Advisor's office before a press conference between mid-August and early September.

I'll sink Manhattan.

In a morbid but serendipitous coincidence, TMBG's "I'll Sink Manhattan" came on shuffle as I read this Science Daily article about how vulnerable NYC is to flooding. It's hard to juxtapose New Orleans with New York, but scientists say it's inevitable.

Scary snippet:

If a category-3 hurricane hit NYC, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that nearly 30% of the south side of Manhattan would be flooded. Storm surge flooding could threaten billions of dollars of property and have a grave impact on the lives of the millions of people who live in NYC. During the December 1992 nor'easter, storm tides over-topped some of the region's seawalls for only a few hours, but managed to flood the NYC subway and the PATH train systems at the train station in Hoboken New Jersey, shutting down these transportation systems for several days.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Kamikaze have feelings too.


This sounds like a very interesting exhibit. I never gave much thought to how kamikaze pilots felt about being ordered to their deaths (literally), or even considered it in those terms. I had always assumed they were just crazy pilots, brainwashed by patriotism and happy to blow themselves up, and not, say, 20-year-old kids given a death sentence by their government. These letters sound very interesting.

I'll quote the story in full from The Japan Times:

Letters from kamikaze translated

KAGOSHIMA (Kyodo) The Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots has introduced a touch-panel display system with English translations of final letters and songs left behind by pilots who mounted suicide attacks during World War II.

The system provides photos and profiles of the pilots as well as photos of their final letters and songs with transcriptions in Japanese and English.

Many of the letters and songs were written in brush and ink with archaic terms. To help young people understand them, all kanji in the Japanese transcriptions are accompanied by kana to indicate their pronunciation.

The museum in Minamikyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture, has decided to provide the English translations as well in view of an increasing number of visitors from overseas, museum officials said.

"I want many people to know how the pilots felt when they wrote about their internal conflicts before leaving Chiran on kamikaze missions," said Takeshi Kawatoko, a museum official in charge of the English translations.

The town of Chiran, now part of the city of Minamikyushu, served as the Imperial Japanese Army's main air base for kamikaze attacks on ships near Okinawa.

The museum has also published "Mind of the Kamikaze," an English guidebook about the feelings of kamikaze pilots and how the Imperial army began suicide attacks.

Hometown News: Drunken morons riot at Jones Beach

In this new feature, I'll discuss important news from my hometown of Long Island (pronounced: Lawn Guyland). I should probably discuss the hideous "Montauk Monster" that's the talk of the town, but I honestly think it's the least ugly thing about the Hamptons.

Instead, today's hometown story is about the parking lot of Jones Beach - a wonderful place for mullet spotting. You can often find me migrating there once every three years to see power rock trio Rush, while overweight LI basement trolls blast the rarest, most obscure Rush tunes from the tape decks of their Chevelles.

Anyway, there was a recent concert by some college meathead band called O.A.R. and the tailgating dorks got rowdy. I mention this because I love this one line in the Newsday report.

Alcohol fuels unrest at Jones Beach concert

Alcohol-fueled pandemonium broke out Saturday night outside an O.A.R. concert at Jones Beach, according to witnesses and police officers at the show.

Concertgoers threw beer bottles, stood on car rooftops and tossed young women in the air, police officers at the show said.

At least a dozen people were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, several underage, officers at the show said.

Patrons sometime misbehave at concerts, but the crowd before the concert was different, a police supervisor said.


Okay, see that line in bold? That creates so many more questions than it answers. Were the women willing participants of such aerial acrobatics or were they flung skyward against their will? How widespread was this? Did cops just happen to see one zany flying-female antic, or were women being catapulted left and right? Is lady-tossing a new entry in LI's pantheon of sports, such as darts and street hockey? Should I be ashamed of my heritage or move back immediately?

If anyone knows anything more about this phenomenon, please leave a comment.

Update: Newsday removed that article with the women-tossing reference. They replaced it with this one instead, which has more information but is sadly less colorful.

Coozer Prophesy #1


For the past two years, I've been telling anyone who would listen (read: my cat) that jellyfish are going to completely take over the ocean and, eventually, the world. It is a prophesy I fear is turning true even quicker than anyone expected (read: me and my cat).

This is our own stupid, greedy fault. Through overfishing using giant thresher-like killing machines, we've massacred most life in huge patches of the ocean, including the fish that are natural predators of jellyfish. As a result, jellyfish have proliferated. They may become, if they aren't already, the most prevalent creature in the ocean. And the scary thing is, jellyfish are still a mystery to us. Not to mention uber creepy.

After many warnings in the nature journals, mainstream media is finally picking up on it. Here's an article from today's New York Times.

God have mercy on our souls.

Cop car chase smashes into bratwurst festival.

It's like something out of the Blues Brothers. Cops chase car, and both ram into a parade celebrating bratwursts. The image of Wisconsin cheeseheads dressed up as sausages and run over by cars is hilarious. Too bad it actually happened and children got hurt. Article here.

5 facts about pain.


I like to pretend I'm a stoic invulnerable man's man (how else will Clive Owen learn to love me?), but the truth is that pain makes me whimper like a frightened puppy during its first thunderstorm.

So at first I didn't want to read this article from Live Science, as vicarious pain makes me squirm nearly as much as physical pain (which is why I won't be in the same room as my wife if she's ever in labor). But it's a fascinating article. Here are the highlights in my words:

1. Scientists still haven't defined pain.
2. People with chronic pain have smaller brains.
3. Forget what your wife says - migraines actually lead to sexual desire.
4. Women have more nerve fibers than men and feel more and stronger pain for longer durations. (Wimps.)
5. The naked mole rat isn't affected by chili peppers.

I hate stampedes.


In this tragic incident, 150 Hindu worshipers, including 40 children and 45 women, are dead and over 50 injured when rumors of falling rocks caused panic during a pilgrimage.

Very sad, but it's also strange that these sorts of things keep happening. Not to be flip, but maybe they should limit the number of people on the narrow roads or build more temples with larger capacity or something. I'm just saying that these things seem preventable.

The way I see it, deadly stampedes should only occur at rock concerts and soccer games.

Rocket with Star Trek actor's ashes fails to launch for third time.

You know those geeky Star Trek fans who swear there's solid science behind the show? Send them this article showing that our greatest scientific minds can't even get a stupid little rocket passed the stratosphere. Maybe James Doohan's ashes are weighing it down.

I mean, hey, I'd love teleporting technology, but this article shows why we should first focus on getting normal, everyday things to work properly. Isn't it amazing that NY has had a mass transit system since 1878 and I still can't take the subway without wanting to Top Pop someone on the MTA?

Trend Spotting: Decapitation is in!


Everyone's losing their head for the newest fad - decapitation!

Hot on the heels of the nutty Canadian Greyhound incident, some dude on a small Greek island, BBC reports, beheaded his girlfriend and calmly paraded her head around the streets while residents barricaded themselves in and hoped the afterimage wouldn't psychologically scar them.

What bothers me is that the US is totally missing out on this cranium cleaving craze. We're usually the trend setters, especially in the gruesome and gratuitous violence sector, and here we are heads and tails behind second-tier countries like Canadia and Greece. We were late to Brit-Pop and J-Pop - it kills me that we haven't yet caught onto Top Pop (my phrase for the fad).

I hate restaurants with stupid signs on their bathroom doors.

This important news item from Ananova raises two interesting questions: 1) Why do restaurants put annoyingly unintuitive signs on their bathroom doors, and 2) China has a pizza place?

I've hated stupid bathroom signs ever since I spent a week at this Wild West ranch camp place in Colorado when I was 11. I don't remember anything about that trip, including why I was there, but I do remember how the bathrooms were differentiated by "Buckaroos" and "Buccaneers". I had no idea which I was, and I was too young/self-conscious to ask for help. I don't think I used the bathroom all week.

Now, as a jet-setting New Yorker who finds himself dragged to all the hot clubs, I still find myself quizzically pondering the doors in front of me. Typically, I just let my nose be the guide, but can this annoying trend PLEASE go away and save me from having to embarrassingly ask a snooty waiter for help? If not, I'm just going to save myself from further shame and simply poop my pants.

Hershey, who tried changing the definition of "chocolate," now banking on purity.


Hershey is lame.

They were late to the game during (dark) chocolate’s resurgence as a health benefit. Now your average suburbanite would rather spend $5 on a designer chocolate bar from Trader Joe’s with 80% cocoa that tastes like licking tree bark run through someone's ass than 50 cents on a Hershey’s bar of the same size. You have to really screw up your company if your customers would rather spend 10 times the amount of money on a competing product that makes them gag.

But that's not why they're lame. I think it's good that Hershey's hasn't tried to be something they're not and get all boutiquey on us. Would you trust a Hershey's bar with chunks of mango, ginger, and habanero peppers?

It's Hershey’s new campaign that annoys me. They’re essentially re-branding themselves as what they’ve always been – the boring Campbell’s soup of chocolate that no one likes anymore. But their new emphasis of purity is repulsive.

Read on, and I'll explain.

From AdWeek:

Hershey this week began airing a TV spot that marks the beginning of its "Pure Hershey's" campaign, which seeks to associate the candy maker's chocolate with feelings of happiness, innocence and simplicity.

[…] The first 30- and 15-second ads, via Havas' Arnold, will run next quarter and into 2009-all aiming to connect Hershey's chocolate with various pleasant emotions.

The current spot is the work of Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman Animations. It takes viewers inside a Hershey's candy bar that melts into an animated scene of a girl on a swing, which morphs into another scene showing the girl and her boyfriend driving in a chocolate convertible. Chocolate bunnies chase the couple as they ride into the sunset and "I Melt With You" by Modern English provides background music. A female voiceover asks: "What makes a Hershey's bar pure?" She then answers: "Pure simplicity," "pure happiness," "pure delicious."

Okay, about this "pure" garbage. Isn't this the company that aggressively lobbied the FDA to change the definition of "chocolate?" From Wikipedia:

In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, began to lobby the FDA to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter as well as artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes. Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.

In fall 2007, Hershey changed their milk chocolate recipe by adding lactose, milk fat, and the food additive PGPR.

PGPR, by the way, is Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate, a chemical emulsifier used to reduce the need for cocoa butter, and thus make the chocolate even cheaper to produce.

Ah, purity!

Addendum: Hershey Park is still cool.

EXTERMINATE!!!


I just watched the season finale of Doctor Who, drunk, and didn't understand a second of it. As a recent Cult of Who inductee, I probably wouldn't have understood it sober anyway. But one thing I did get was the Daleks' hatred of humankind, as illustrated by their piercingly shrill sentiment to "EXTERMINATE!"

As such, I've established this blog to highlight the idiocracy of humankind. Via news posts and articles, I'll contend that we should collectively hurl ourselves off a cliff.

There are some things I enjoy - food, booze, travel, pretty girls including my wife, Rusty the cat, the nubs on Daleks that remind me of candy buttons - and will post about them accordingly and as the mood strikes. For now, though, please join me in hating everything.

Jah Love,
Coozer